Born November 20, 1921, in Knoxville,
Iowa, Earling Carothers Garrison
- known as "Jim" to friends and family - was raised
in New Orleans. At
age 19, one year before Pearl Harbor, he joined the army. In
1942, he
was sent to Europe, where he volunteered to fly spotter planes
over
the front lines. Following the war,
he attended law school at Tulare,
joined the FBI, and served as a special agent in Seattle and
Tacoma.
After growing bored with his agency assignments, he returned
to New
Orleans to practice law. He served as an assistant district attorney
from 1954 to 1958.He helped crack down
on prostitution, tax malfeasance and racketeering in New Orleans but
was a controversial figure.

In 1961, Garrison decided to
run for district attorney on a platform
openly hostile to then-New Orleans Mayor Victor Schiro. To the
surprise of many, he was elected without any major political
backing.
He was 43 years old and had been district attorney for less than
two
years when Kennedy was killed. "I was an old-fashioned patriot,"
he
writes in "On the Trail of the Assassins," (Sheridan Square Press,
NY), "a product of my family, my military experience,
and my years in the
legal profession. I could not imagine then that the government
would
ever deceive the citizens of this country."

Jim Garrison's Playboy Interview

"I
only wish the press would allow our case to stand
or fall on its merits in court. It appears that
certain elements of the mass media have an active
interest in preventing this case from ever
coming to trial at all and find it necessary to
employ against me every smear device in the book. "

Jim Garrison's Playboy Interviewvol. 14 no. 10 - October 1967

Part 1 of 3

PLAYBOY: You have been accused --- by the National Broadcasting
Company, Newsweek, the New Orleans Metropolitan Crime Commission
and your own former investigative aide William Gurvich --- of
attempts to intimidate witnesses, of engaging in criminal conspiracy
and of inciting to such felonies as perjury, criminal defamation
and public bribery. How do you respond to these charges?

GARRISON: I've stopped beating my wife. All the charges
you enumerate have been made with one purpose in mind --- to place
our office on the defensive and make us waste valuable time answering
allegations that have no basis in fact. Also involved is a psychological
by-product valuable to those who don't want the truth about Kennedy's
assassination to become known: The very repetition of a charge
lends it a certain credibility, since people have a tendency to
believe that where there's smoke, there's fire --- although I
find it difficult to believe that the public will put much credence
in most of the dastardly deeds I've been accused of in the past
few months. Just recently, for example, the rumor went around
that my staff was peddling marijuana to high school students and
that one of our major witnesses had just confessed that his testimony
was based on a dream induced by an overdose of LSD. We've also
been accused of planning an attack on the local FBI office with
guns loaded with red pepper, having stolen money from our own
investigative files and having threatened to shoot one witness
in the derriere with an exotic gun propelling truth-serum darts.
I just hope they never find out about my involvement in the Boston
Brinks robbery.

I must admit, however, that I'm beginning to worry about the
cumulative effect of this propaganda blitzkrieg on potential jurors
for the trial of Clay Shaw. I don't know how long they can withstand
the drumbeat obbligato of charges exonerating the defendant and
convicting the prosecutor. For months now, the establishment's
artillery units have been pounding away at the two themes NBC
focused on --- that my office uses "improper methods"
with regard to witnesses and that we don't really have a case
against Mr. Shaw and he should never be brought to trial. I hope
you'll give me the chance to answer each of these charges in detail;
but first, let me elaborate a bit on the methods we employ in
this or any other investigation.

My office has been one of the most scrupulous in the country
with regard to the protection of individual rights. I've been
on record for years in law journals and books as championing the
rights of the individual against the oppressive power of the state.
My office moved in and prevented police seizure from bookstores
of books arbitrarily labeled "obscene." I intervened
and managed to persuade the Louisiana legislature to remove a
provision from its new code of criminal procedure that would allow
judges to reach out from the bench and cite newsmen for contempt
if they penned anything embarrassing to the judges. My office
has investigated cases where we had already obtained convictions;
and on discovering new evidence indicating that the defendant
was not guilty, we've obtained a reversal of the verdict. In over
five years of office, I have never had a single case reversed
because of the use of improper methods --- a record I'll match
with any other D. A. in the country.

In this particular case, I've taken unusual steps to protect
the rights of the defendant and assure him a fair trial. Before
we introduced the testimony of our witnesses, we made them undergo
independent verifying tests, including polygraph examination,
truth serum and hypnosis. We thought this would be hailed as an
unprecedented step in jurisprudence; instead, the press turned
around and hinted that we had drugged our witnesses or given them
posthypnotic suggestions to testify falsely. After arresting Mr.
Shaw, we filed a motion for a preliminary hearing --- a proceeding
that essentially operates in the defendant's favor. Such a hearing
is generally requested by the defense, and it was virtually unheard
of that the motion be filed by the state, which under the law
has the right to charge a defendant outright, without any evaluation
by a judge of the pending charges. But I felt that because of
the enormity of this accusation, we should lean over backward
and give the defendant every chance. A three-judge panel heard
our evidence against Mr. Shaw and his attorneys' rebuttals and
ordered him indicted for conspiracy to assassinate the President.

And I might add here that it's a matter of record that my relationship
with the judiciary of our fair city is not a Damon-Pythias camaraderie.
Once the judges had handed down their decision, we could have
immediately filed a charge against the defendant just by signing
it and depositing it with the city clerk --- the customary method
of charging a defendant. Nevertheless, out of concern for Mr.
Shaw's rights, we voluntarily presented the case to a blue-ribbon
grand jury. If this grand jury had failed to indict Mr. Shaw,
our case would have been dead as a doornail. But the grand jury,
composed of 12 eminent New Orleans citizens, heard our evidence
and indicted the defendant for participation in a conspiracy to
assassinate John Kennedy. In a further effort to protect the rights
of the defendant, and in the face of the endlessly reiterated
accusation that we have no case against him --- despite the unanimous
verdict of the grand jury and the judges at the preliminary hearing
--- I have studiously refrained from making any public statement
critical of the defendant or prejudging his guilt. Of course,
this puts me at a considerable disadvantage when the press claims
I have no case against him, because the only way I could convince
them of the strength of my case is to throw open our files and
let them examine the testimony of all our witnesses. Apart from
the injustice such an act would do Mr. Shaw, it could get our
whole case thrown out of court on the grounds that we had prejudiced
the defendant's rights by pretrial publicity. So I won't fall
into that particular trap, whatever the provocation.

I only wish the press would allow our case to stand or fall
on its merits in court. It appears that certain elements of the
mass media have an active interest in preventing this case from
ever coming to trial at all and find it necessary to employ against
me every smear device in the book. To read the press accounts
of my investigation --- my "circus," I should say ---
I'm a cross between Al Capone and Attila the Hun, ruthlessly hounding
innocent men, trampling their legal rights, bribing and threatening
witnesses and in general violating every canon of legal ethics.
My God, anybody who employs the kind of methods that elements
of the news media attribute to me should not only not be a district
attorney, he should be disbarred. This case has taught me the
difference between image and reality, and the power of the mythmakers.
But I know I've done everything possible to conduct this investigation
with honesty and integrity and with full respect for the civil
rights of the defendant. But a blanket denial of charges against
me isn't going to convince anyone, so why don't we consider them
one by one?

PLAYBOY: All right. The May 15th issue of Newsweek
charged that two of your investigators offered David Ferrie's
former roommate, Alvin Beauboeuf, $3000 and an airline job if
he would help substantiate your charges against Clay Shaw. How
do you answer this accusation?

GARRISON: Mr. Beauboeuf was one of the two men who accompanied
David Ferrie on a mysterious trip from New Orleans to Texas on
the day of the assassination, so naturally we were interested
in him from the very start of our investigation. At first he showed
every willingness to cooperate with our office; but after Ferrie's
death, somebody gave him a free trip to Washington. From that
moment on, a change came over Beauboeuf; he refused to cooperate
with us any further and he made the charges against my investigators
to which you refer.

Fortunately, Beauboeuf had signed an affidavit on April 12th
--- well after the alleged bribe offer was supposed to have been
made --- affirming that "no representative of the New Orleans
Parish district attorney's office has ever asked me to do anything
but to tell the truth. Any inference or statement by anyone to
the contrary has no basis in fact." As soon as his attorney
began broadcasting his charges, we asked the New Orleans police
department to thoroughly investigate the matter. And on June 12th,
the police department --- which is not, believe me, in the pocket
of the district attorney's office --- released a report concluding
that exhaustive investigation by the police intelligence branch
had cleared my staff of any attempt to bribe or threaten Beauboeuf
into giving untrue testimony. There was no mention of this report,
predictably enough, in Newsweek.

Let me make one thing clear, though: Like every police department
and district attorney's office across the country, we have sums
set aside to pay informers for valuable information --- but we
would never suborn perjury. This isn't because we're saints ---
short cuts like that could be awfully tempting in a frustrating
case --- but because we're realistic enough to know that any witness
who can be bought by us can also be bought by the other side.
So it's rather na --- ve, apart from being ethically objectionable,
to assume that our investigators travel around the country with
bags of money trying to bribe witnesses to lie on the witness
stand. We just don't operate that way.

PLAYBOY: On an NBC television special, "The J.F.K.
Conspiracy: The Case of Jim Garrison," a former Turkish-bathhouse
operator in New Orleans, Fred Leemans, claimed that one of your
aides offered him money to testify that Clay Shaw had frequented
his establishment with Lee Harvey Oswald. Do you also deny this
charge?

GARRISON: Yes; and it's a perfect illustration of the
point I was just making about how easy it is for the other side
to buy witnesses and then charge us with its own misconduct. Mr.
Leemans came to us in early May, volunteering testimony to the
effect that he had often seen a man named Clay Bertrand in his
bathhouse, sometimes accompanied by men he described as "Latins."
In a sworn affidavit, Leemans said he had also seen a young man
called Lee with Bertrand on four or five occasions --- a man who
fits the description of Lee Harvey Oswald. Leemans also identified
the Clay Bertrand who had frequented his establishment as Clay
Shaw. Now, this was important testimony, and initially we were
favorably impressed with Mr. Leemans. But then we started receiving
calls from him demanding money.

Well, I've told you our policy on this, and the answer was
a flat no. He was quiet for a while and then he called and asked
if we would approve if he sold his story to a magazine, since
he badly needed money. We refused to give him such approval. Apparently,
the National Broadcasting Company was able to establish a warmer
relationship with Mr. Leemans. In any case, he now says that he
didn't really lie to us; he just "told us what he thought
we wanted to hear." I'm sure he was equally cooperative with
NBC --- although he's beginning to spread his favors around. When
a reporter asked him for more information after the broadcast,
Leemans refused, explaining that he was saving himself for the
Associated Press, "since I want to make something out of
this." I would like to make one personal remark about Mr.
Leemans. I don't know if he was lying to us initially or not ---
though I suspect from other evidence in my possession that his
statement as he first gave it was accurate --- but anybody, no
matter what his financial straits, who tries to make a fast buck
off the assassination of John Kennedy is several rungs below the
anthropoid ape on the evolutionary scale.

PLAYBOY: On this same NBC show, newsman Frank McGee
claimed that NBC investigators had discovered that your two key
witnesses against Clay Shaw --- Perry Russo and Vernon Bundy ---
both failed polygraph tests prior to their testimony before the
grand jury. In the case of Russo, who claimed to have attended
a meeting at David Ferrie's apartment where Shaw, Oswald and Ferrie
plotted the assassination, NBC said that "Russo's answers
to a series of questions indicate, in the language of the polygraph
operator, 'deception criteria.' He was asked if he knew Clay Shaw.
He was asked if he knew Lee Harvey Oswald. His 'yes' answer to
both of these questions indicated 'deception criteria.'"
Did Bundy and Russo fail their lie-detector tests?

GARRISON: No, and NBC's allegations in this area are
about as credible as its other charges. The men who administered
both polygraph tests flatly deny that Russo and Bundy failed the
test. I'll offer right now to make Russo's and Bundy's polygraph
tests accessible to any reputable investigator or reporter the
day Clay Shaw's trial begins; I can't do it before that, because
I'm restrained from releasing material pertaining to Shaw's guilt
or innocence. Just for your information, though, the veracity
of Bundy and Russo has been affirmed not only through polygraph
tests but through hypnosis and the administration of sodium amytal
--- truth serum.

I want to make a proposition to the president of NBC: If this
charge is true, then I will resign as district attorney of New
Orleans. If it's untrue, however, then the president of NBC should
resign. Just in case he thinks I'm kidding, I'm ready to meet
with him at any time to select a mutually acceptable committee
to determine once and for all the truth or falsehood of this charge.
In all fairness, however, I must add that the fact Bundy and Russo
passed their polygraph tests is not, in and of itself, irrefutable
proof that they were telling the truth; that's why we administered
the other tests. The lie detector isn't a foolproof technique.
A man well rehearsed and in complete control of himself can master
those reactions that would register on the polygraph as deception
criteria and get away with blatant lies, while someone who is
extremely nervous and anxiety-ridden could tell the truth and
have it register as a lie. Much also depends on who administers
the test, since it can easily be rigged. For example, Jack Ruby
took a lie-detector test for the Warren Commission and told lie
after outright lie --- even little lies that could be easily checked
--- and yet the Warren Commission concluded that he passed the
test. So the polygraph is only one weapon in the arsenal we use
to verify a witness' testimony, and we have never considered it
conclusive; we have abundant documentation to corroborate their
stories.

PLAYBOY: Two convicts, Miguel Torres and John Cancler,
told NBC that Vernon Bundy admitted having lied in his testimony
linking Clay Shaw to Lee Oswald. Do you dismiss this as just another
NBC fabrication?

GARRISON: Messrs. Cancler and Torres were both convicted
by my office, as were almost half the men in the state penitentiary,
and I'm sure the great majority of them have little love for the
man who sent them up. I don't know if they fabricated their stories
in collusion with NBC or on their own for motives of revenge,
but I'm convinced from what I know of Vernon Bundy that his testimony
was truthful. NBC manipulated the statements of Cancler and Torres
to give the impression to the viewer that he was watching a trial
on television --- my trial --- and that these "objective"
witnesses were saying exactly what they would say in a court of
law. Actually --- and NBC scrupulously avoided revealing this
to its audience --- their "testimony" was not under
oath, there was no opportunity for cross-examination or the presentation
of rebuttal witnesses, and the statements of Cancler, Torres and
all the rest of NBC's road company were edited so that the public
would hear only those elements of their story that would damage
our case. The rules of evidence and adversary procedure, I might
add, have been developed over many years precisely to prevent
this kind of phony side show.

Of course, these two convicts have been used against my office
in variety of respects. Miguel Torres also claims I offered him
a full pardon, a vacation in Florida and an ounce of heroin if
he would testify that Clay Shaw had made homosexual overtures
to him on the street. What on earth that would have established
relevant to this case I still don't know, but that's his story.
I think it was actually rather cheap of me to offer Torres only
an ounce of heroin; that wouldn't have lasted out his vacation.
A kilo would be more like it. After all, I'm not stingy. Torres'
friend John Cancler, a burglar, has also charged that one of my
investigators tried to induce him to burglarize Clay Shaw's house
and plant false evidence there, but he refused because he would
not have such a heinous sin on his conscience. I suppose that's
why Cancler's prison nickname is "John the Baptist."
I can assure you, if we ever wanted to burglarize Shaw's home
--- which we never did --- John the Baptist would be the last
man on earth we'd pick for the job. By the way, Mr. Cancler was
called before the grand jury and asked if he had told the truth
to NBC. He replied; "I refuse to answer on the grounds that
my answer might incriminate me" --- and was promptly sentenced
to six months in prison and a $500 fine for contempt of court.

"if the evidence doesn't support that conclusion
--- and it doesn't ---
a thousand
honorable men sitting shoulder to shoulder along the banks of the Potomac won't
change the facts."

PLAYBOY: The NBC special also claimed to have discovered
that "Clay, or Clem, Bertrand does exist. Clem Bertrand is
not his real name. It is a pseudonym used by a homosexual in New
Orleans. For his protection, we will not disclose the real name
of the man known as Clem Bertrand. His real name has been given
to the Department of Justice. He is not Clay Shaw." Doesn't
this undermine your entire case against Shaw?

GARRISON: Your faith in NBC's veracity is touching and
indicates that the Age of Innocence is not yet over. NBC does
not have the real Clay Bertrand; the man whose name NBC so melodramatically
turned over to the Justice Department is that of Eugene Davis,
a New Orleans bar owner, who has firmly denied under oath that
he has ever used the name Clay, or Clem, Bertrand. We know from
incontrovertible evidence in our possession who the real Clay
Bertrand is --- and we will prove it in court.

But to make this whole thing a little clearer, let me tell
you the genesis of the whole "Clay Bertrand" story.
A New Orleans lawyer, Dean Andrews, told the Warren Commission
that a few months before the assassination of President Kennedy,
Lee Harvey Oswald and a group of "gay Mexicanos" came
to his office and requested Andrews' aid in having Oswald's Marine
Corps undesirable discharge changed to an honorable discharge;
Oswald subsequently returned alone with other legal problems.

Andrews further testified that the day after President Kennedy
was assassinated, he received a call from Clay Bertrand, who asked
him to rush to Dallas to represent Oswald. Andrews claims he subsequently
saw Bertrand in a New Orleans bar, but Bertrand fled when Andrews
approached him. This was intriguing testimony, although the Warren
Commission dismissed it out of hand; and in 1964, Mark Lane traveled
to New Orleans to speak to Andrews. He found him visibly frightened.
"I'll take you to dinner," Andrews told Lane, "but
I can't talk about the case. I called Washington and they told
me that if I said anything, I might get a bullet in the head."
For the same reason, he has refused to cooperate with my office
in this investigation. The New York Times reported on February
26th that "Mr. Andrews said he had not talked to Mr. Garrison
because such talk might be dangerous, but added that he believed
he was being 'tailed.'" Andrews told our grand jury that
he could not say Clay Shaw was Clay Bertrand and he could not
say he wasn't. But the day after NBC's special, Andrews broke
his silence and said, yes, Clay Shaw is not Clem Bertrand and
identified the real Clay Bertrand as Eugene Davis. The only trouble
is, Andrews and Davis have known each other for years and have
been seen frequently in each other's company. Andrews has lied
so often and about so many aspects of this case that the New Orleans
Parish grand jury has indicted him for perjury. I feel sorry for
him, since he's afraid of getting a bullet in his head, but he's
going to have to go to trial for perjury. [Andrews has since been
convicted.]

PLAYBOY: You expressed your reaction to the NBC show
in concrete terms on July seventh, when you formally charged Walter
Sheridan, the network's special investigator for the broadcast,
with attempting to bribe your witness Perry Russo. Do you really
have a case against Sheridan, or is this just a form of harassment?

GARRISON: The reason we haven't lost a major case in
over five years in office is that we do not charge a man unless
we can make it stick in court. And I'm not in the business of
harassing anybody. Sheridan was charged because evidence was brought
to us indicating that he attempted to bribe Perry Russo by offering
him free transportation to California, free lodgings and a job
once there, payment of all legal fees in any extradition proceedings
and immunity from my office. Mr. Russo has stated that Sheridan
asked his help "to wreck the Garrison investigation"
and "offered to set me up in California, protect my job and
guarantee that Garrison would never get me extradited." According
to Russo, Sheridan added that both NBC and the CIA were out to
scuttle my case.

I think it's significant that the chief investigator for this
ostensibly objective broadcast starts telling people the day he
arrives in town that he is going to "destroy Garrison"
--- this at the same time he is unctuously assuring me that NBC
wanted only the truth and he had an entirely open mind on my case.
Let me tell you something about Walter Sheridan's background,
and maybe you'll understand his true role in all this. Sheridan
was one of the bright, hard young investigators who entered the
Justice Department under Bobby Kennedy. He was assigned to nail
Jimmy Hoffa. Sheridan employed a wide variety of highly questionable
tactics in the Justice Department's relentless drive against Hoffa;
he was recently subpoenaed to testify in connection with charges
that he wire-tapped the offices of Hoffa's associates and then
played back incriminating tapes to them, warning that unless they
testified for the Government, they would be destroyed along with
Hoffa.

A few years ago, Sheridan left the Justice Department --- officially,
at least --- and went to work for NBC. No honest reporter out
for a story would have so completely prejudged the situation and
been willing to employ such tactics. I think it's likely that
in his zeal to destroy my case, he exceeded the authority granted
him by NBC's executives in New York. I get the impression that
the majority of NBC executives probably thought Sheridan's team
came down here in an uncompromising search for the truth. When
Sheridan overstepped himself and it became obvious that the broadcast
was, to say the least, not objective, NBC realized it was in a
touchy position. Cooler heads prevailed and I was allowed to present
our case to the American people. For that, at least, I'm singularly
grateful to Walter Sheridan.

PLAYBOY: How do you respond to the charge of your critics
--- including NBC --- that you launched this probe for political
reasons, hoping the attendant publicity would be a springboard
to a Senate seat or to the governorship?

GARRISON: I'd have to be a terribly cynical and corrupt
man to place another human being on trial for conspiracy to murder
the President of the United States just to gratify my political
ambition. But I guess there are a lot of people around the country,
especially after NBC's attack, who think that's just the kind
of man I am. That rather saddens me. I'm no Albert Schweitzer,
but I could never do a thing like that. I derive no pleasure from
prosecuting a man, even though I know he's guilty; do you think
I could sleep at night or look at myself in the mirror in the
morning if I hounded an innocent man?

You know, I always received much more satisfaction as a defense
attorney in obtaining an acquittal for a client than I ever have
as a D.A. in obtaining a conviction. All my interests and sympathies
tend to be on the side of the individual as opposed to the state.
So this is really the worst charge that anyone could make against
me --- that in order to get my name in the paper, or to advance
politically, I would destroy another human being. This kind of
charge reveals a good deal about the personality of the people
who make it; to impute such motives to another man is to imply
you're harboring them yourself.

But to look at a different aspect of your question, I'm inclined
to challenge the whole premise that launching an investigation
like this holds any political advantages for me. A politically
ambitious man would hardly be likely to challenge the massed power
of the Federal Government and criticize so many honorable figures
and distinguished agencies. Actually, this charge is an argument
in favor of my investigation: Would such a slimy type, eager to
profiteer on the assassination, jeopardize his political ambitions
if he didn't have an ironclad case? If I were really the ambitious
monster they paint me, why would I climb out on such a limb and
then saw it off? Unless he had the facts, it would be the last
thing a politically ambitious man would do. I was perfectly aware
that I might have signed my political death warrant the moment
I launched this case --- but I couldn't care less as long as I
can shed some light on John Kennedy's assassination. As a matter
of fact, after this last murderous year, I find myself thinking
more and more about returning to private life and having time
to read again, to get out in the sun and hit a golf ball. But
before I do that, I'm going to break this case and let the public
know the truth. I won't quit before that day. I wouldn't give
the bastards the satisfaction.

PLAYBOY: According to your own former chief investigator,
William Gurvich, the truth about the assassination has already
been published in the Warren Report. After leaving your staff
last June, he announced, "If there is any truth to any of
Garrison's charges about there being a conspiracy, I haven't been
able to find it." When members of your own staff have no
faith in your case, how do you expect the public to be impressed?

GARRISON: First of all, I won't deny for a minute that
for at least three months I trusted Bill Gurvich implicitly. He
was never my "chief investigator" --- that's his own
terminology --- because there was no such position on my staff
while he worked for me. But two days before Christmas 1966, Gurvich,
who operates a private detective agency, visited my office and
told me he'd heard of my investigation and thought I was doing
a wonderful job. He presented me with a beautiful color-TV set
and asked if he could be of use in any capacity.

Well, right then and there, I should have sat back and asked
myself a few searching questions --- like how he had heard of
my probe in the first place, since only the people we were questioning
and a few of my staff, as far as I knew, were aware of what was
going on at that time. We had been under way for only five weeks,
remember. And I should also have recalled the old adage about
Greeks bearing gifts. But I was desperately understaffed --- I
had only six aides available to work on the assassination inquiry
full time --- and here comes a trained private investigator offering
his services free of charge. It was like a gift from the gods.

So I set Gurvich to work; and for the next couple of months,
he did an adequate job of talking to witnesses, taking photographs,
etc. But then, around March, I learned that he had been seeing
Walter Sheridan of NBC. Well, this didn't bother me at first,
because I didn't know then the role Sheridan was playing in this
whole affair. But after word got back to me from my witnesses
about Sheridan's threats and harassment, I began keeping a closer
eye on Bill. I still didn't really think he was any kind of a
double agent, but I couldn't help wondering why he was rubbing
elbows with people like that.

Now, don't forget that Gurvich claims he became totally disgusted
with our investigation at the time of Clay Shaw's arrest --- yet
for several months afterward he continued to wax enthusiastic
about every aspect of our case, and I have a dozen witnesses who
will testify to that effect. I guess this was something that should
have tipped me off about Bill: He was always enthusiastic, never
doubtful or cautionary, even when I or one of my staff threw out
a hypothesis that on reflection we realized was wrong. And I began
to notice how he would pick my mind for every scrap of fact pertaining
to the case. So I grew suspicious and took him off the sensitive
areas of the investigation and relegated him to chauffeuring and
routine clerical duties.

This seemed to really bother him, and every day he would come
into my office and pump me for information, complaining that he
wasn't being told enough about the case. I still had nothing concrete
against him and I didn't want to be unjust, but I guess my manner
must have cooled perceptibly, because one day about two months
before he surfaced in Washington, Bill just vanished from our
sight. And with him, I'm sorry to confess, vanished a copy of
our master file.

How do you explain such behavior? It's possible that Bill joined
us initially for reasons of opportunism, seeing a chance to get
in at the beginning of an earth-shaking case, and subsequently
chickened out when he saw the implacable determination of some
powerful agencies to destroy our investigation and discredit everyone
associated with it. But I really don't believe Bill is that much
of a coward. It's also possible that those who want to prevent
an investigation learned early what we were doing and made a decision
to plant somebody on the inside of the investigation. Let me stress
that I have no secret documents or monitored telephone calls to
support this hypothesis; it just seems to me the most logical
explanation for Bill's behavior. Let me put it this way: If you
were in charge of the CIA and willing to spend scores of millions
of dollars on such relatively penny-ante projects as infiltrating
the National Students Association, wouldn't you make an effort
to infiltrate an investigation that could seriously damage the
prestige of your agency?

PLAYBOY: How could your probe damage the prestige of
the CIA and cause them to take countermeasures against you?

GARRISON: For the simple reason that a number of the
men who killed the President were former employees of the CIA
involved in its anti-Castro underground activities in and around
New Orleans. The CIA knows their identity. So do I --- and our
investigation has established this without the shadow of a doubt.
Let me stress one thing, however: We have no evidence that any
official of the CIA was involved with the conspiracy that led
to the President's death.

PLAYBOY: Do you lend no credence, then, to the charges
of a former CIA agent, J. Garrett Underhill, that there was a
conspiracy within the CIA to assassinate Kennedy?

GARRISON: I've become familiar with the case of Gary
Underhill, and I've been able to ascertain that he was not the
type of man to make wild or unsubstantiated charges. Underhill
was an intelligence agent in World War Two and an expert on military
affairs whom the Pentagon considered one of the country's top
authorities on limited warfare. He was on good personal terms
with the top brass in the Defense Department and the ranking officials
in the CIA. He wasn't a full-time CIA agent, but he occasionally
performed "special assignments" for the Agency. Several
days after the President's assassination, Underhill appeared at
the home of friends in New Jersey, apparently badly shaken, and
charged that Kennedy was killed by a small group within the CIA.
He told friends he believed his own life was in danger. We can't
learn any more from Underhill, I'm afraid, because shortly afterward,
he was found shot to death in his Washington apartment. The coroner
ruled suicide, but he had been shot behind the left ear and the
pistol was found under his left side --- and Underhill was right-handed.

PLAYBOY: Do you believe Underhill was murdered to silence
him?

GARRISON: I don't believe it and I don't disbelieve
it. All I know is that witnesses with vital evidence in this case
are certainly bad insurance risks. In the absence of further and
much more conclusive evidence to the contrary, however, we must
assume that the plotters were acting on their own rather than
on CIA orders when they killed the President. As far as we have
been able to determine, they were not in the pay of the CIA at
the time of the assassination --- and this is one of the reasons
the President was murdered: I'll explain later what I mean by
that. But the CIA could not face up to the American people and
admit that its former employees had conspired to assassinate the
President; so from the moment Kennedy's heart stopped beating,
the Agency attempted to sweep the whole conspiracy under the rug.
The CIA has spared neither time nor the taxpayers' money in its
efforts to hide the truth about the assassination from the American
people. In this respect, it has become an accessory after the
fact in the assassination.

PLAYBOY: Do you have any conclusive evidence to support
these accusations?

GARRISON: I've never revealed this before, but for at
least six months, my office and home telephones --- and those
of every member of my staff --- have been monitored. If there
is as little substance to this investigation as the press and
the Government allege, why would anyone go to all that trouble?
I leave it to your judgment if the monitoring of our phones is
the work of the Women's Christian Temperance Union or the New
Orleans Chamber of Commerce.

PLAYBOY: That's hardly conclusive evidence.

GARRISON: I'd need a book to list all the indications.
But let's start with the fact that most of the attorneys for the
hostile witnesses and defendants were hired by the CIA --- through
one or another of its covers. For example, a New Orleans lawyer
representing Alvin Beauboeuf, who has charged me with every kind
of unethical practice except child molesting --- I expect that
allegation to come shortly before Shaw's trial --- flew with Beauboeuf
to Washington immediately after my office subpoenaed him, where
Beauboeuf was questioned by a "retired" intelligence
officer in the offices of the Justice Department. This trip was
paid for, as are the lawyer's legal fees, by the CIA --- in other
words, with our tax dollars.

Another lawyer, Stephen Plotkin, who represents Gordon Novel
[another of Garrison's key witnesses], has admitted he is paid
by the CIA --- and has also admitted his client is a CIA agent;
you may have seen that story on page 96 of The New York Times,
next to ship departures. Plotkin, incidentally, sued me for $10,000,000
for defaming his client and sued a group of New Orleans businessmen
financing my investigation for $50,000,000 --- which meant, in
effect, that the CIA was suing us. As if they need the money.
But my attorney filed a motion for a deposition to be taken from
Novel, which meant that he would have to return to my jurisdiction
to file his suit and thus be liable for questioning in the conspiracy
case. Rather than come down to New Orleans and face the music,
Novel dropped his suit and sacrificed a possible $60,000,000 judgment.
Now, there's a man of principle; he knows there are some things
more important than money.

PLAYBOY: Do you also believe Clay Shaw's lawyers are
being paid by the CIA?

GARRISON: I can't comment directly on that, since it
relates to Shaw's trial. But I think the clincher, as far as Washington's
obstruction of our probe goes, is the consistent refusal of the
Federal Government to make accessible to us any information about
the roles of the CIA, anti-Castro Cuban exiles and the para-military
right in the assassination. There is, without doubt, a conspiracy
by elements of the Federal Government to keep the facts of this
case from ever becoming known --- a conspiracy that is the logical
extension of the initial conspiracy by the CIA to conceal vital
evidence from the Warren Commission.

PLAYBOY: What "vital evidence" did the CIA
withhold from the Warren Commission?

GARRISON: A good example is Commission Exhibit number
237. This is a photograph of a stocky, balding, middle-aged man
published without explanation or identification in the 26 volumes
of the Warren Report. There's a significant story behind Exhibit
number 237. Throughout the late summer and fall of 1963, Lee Oswald
was shepherded in Dallas and New Orleans by a CIA "baby sitter"
who watched over Oswald's activities and stayed with him. My office
knows who he is and what he looks like.

PLAYBOY: Are you implying that Oswald was working for
the CIA?

GARRISON: Let me finish and you can decide for yourself.
When Oswald went to Mexico City in an effort to obtain a visa
for travel to Cuba, this CIA agent accompanied him. Now, at this
particular time, Mexico was the only Latin-American nation maintaining
diplomatic ties with Cuba, and leftists and Communists from all
over the hemisphere traveled to the Cuban Embassy in Mexico City
for visas to Cuba. The CIA, quite properly, had placed a hidden
movie camera in a building across the street from the embassy
and filmed everyone coming and going. The Warren Commission, knowing
this, had an assistant legal counsel ask the FBI for a picture
of Oswald and his companion on the steps of the embassy, and the
FBI, in turn, filed an affidavit saying they had obtained the
photo in question from the CIA. The only trouble is that the CIA
supplied the Warren Commission with a phony photograph. The photograph
of an "unidentified
man" published in the 26 volumes is not the man who was
filmed with Oswald on the steps of the Cuban Embassy, as alleged
by the CIA. It's perfectly clear that the actual picture of Oswald
and his companion was suppressed and a fake photo substituted
because the second man in the picture was working for the CIA
in 1963, and his identification as a CIA agent would have opened
up a whole can of worms about Oswald's ties with the Agency. To
prevent this, the CIA presented the Warren Commission with fraudulent
evidence --- a pattern that repeats itself whenever the CIA submits
evidence relating to Oswald's possible connection with any U.S.
intelligence agency. The CIA lied to the Commission right down
the line; and since the Warren Commission had no investigative
staff of its own but had to rely on the FBI, the Secret Service
and the CIA for its evidence, it's understandable why the Commission
concluded that Oswald had no ties with American intelligence agencies.

PLAYBOY: What was the nature of these ties?

GARRISON: That's not altogether clear, at least insofar
as his specific assignments are concerned; but we do have proof
that Oswald was recruited by the CIA in his Marine Corps days,
when he was mysteriously schooled in Russian and allowed to subscribe
to Pravda. And shortly before his trip to the Soviet Union, we
have learned, Oswald was trained as an intelligence agent at the
CIA installation at Japan's Atsugi Air Force Base --- which may
explain why no disciplinary action was taken against him when
he returned to the U.S. from the Soviet Union, even though he
had supposedly defected with top-secret information about our
radar networks. The money he used to return to the U.S., incidentally,
was advanced to him by the State Department.

PLAYBOY: In an article for Ramparts, ex-FBI agent William
Turner indicated that White Russian refugee George De Mohrenschildt
may have been Oswald's CIA "baby sitter" in Dallas.
Have you found any links between the CIA and De Mohrenschildt?

GARRISON: I can't comment directly on that, but George
De Mohrenschildt is certainly an enigmatic and intriguing character.
Here you have a wealthy, cultured White Russian émigré
who travels in the highest social circles --- he was a personal
friend of Mrs. Hugh Auchincloss, Jackie Kennedy's mother --- suddenly
developing an intimate relationship with an impoverished ex-Marine
like Lee Oswald. What did they discuss --- last year's season
at Biarritz, or how to beat the bank at Monte Carlo?

And Mr. De Mohrenschildt has a penchant for popping up in the
most interesting places at the most interesting times --- for
example, in Haiti just before a joint Cuban exile-CIA venture
to topple Duvalier and use the island as a springboard for an
invasion of Cuba; and in Guatemala, another CIA training ground,
the day before the Bay of Pigs invasion. We have a good deal more
information about Oswald's CIA contacts in Dallas and New Orleans
--- most of which we discovered by sheer chance --- but there
are still whole areas of inquiry blocked from us by the CIA's
refusal to cooperate with our investigation.

For public consumption, the CIA claims not to have been concerned
with Oswald prior to the assassination. But one thing is certain:
Despite these pious protestations, the CIA
was very much aware of Oswald's activities well before the President's
murder. In a notarized affidavit, State Department officer
James D. Crowley states, "The first time I remember learning
of Oswald's existence was when I received copies of a telegraphic
message from the Central Intelligence Agency dated October 10,
1963, which contained information pertaining to his current activities."
It would certainly be interesting to know what the CIA knew about
Oswald six weeks before the assassination, but the contents of
this particular message never reached the Warren Commission and
remain a complete mystery.

There are also 51 CIA documents classified top secret in the
National Archives pertaining to Lee Oswald and Jack Ruby. Technically,
the members of the Commission had access to them; but in practice,
any document the CIA wanted classified was shunted into the Archives
without examination by the sleeping beauties on the Commission.
Twenty-nine of these files are of particular interest, because
their titles alone indicate that the CIA had extensive information
on Oswald and Ruby before the assassination. A few of these documents
are: CD 347, "Activity of Oswald in Mexico City"; CD
1054, "Information on Jack Ruby and Associates"; CD
692, "Reproduction of Official CIA Dossier on Oswald";
CD 1551, "Conversations Between Cuban President and Ambassador";
CD 698, "Reports of Travel and Activities of Oswald";
CD 943, "Allegations of Pfc. Eugene Dinkin re Assassination
Plot"; and CD 971, "Telephone Calls to U.S. Embassy,
Canberra, Australia, re Planned Assassination."

The titles of these documents are all we have to go on, but
they're certainly intriguing. For example, the public has heard
nothing about phone calls to the U.S. Embassy in Canberra, warning
in advance of the assassination, nor have we been told anything
about a Pfc. Dinkin who claims to have knowledge of an assassination
plot. One of the top-secret files that most intrigues me is CD
931, which is entitled "Oswald's Access to Information About
the U-2." I have 24 years of military experience behind me,
on active duty and in the reserves, and I've never had any access
to the U-2; in fact, I've never seen one. But apparently this
"self-proclaimed Marxist," Lee Harvey Oswald, who we're
assured had no ties to any Government agency, had access to information
about the nation's most secret high-altitude reconnaissance plane.

Of course, it may be that none of these CIA files reveals anything
sinister about Lee Harvey Oswald or hints in any way that he was
employed by our Government. But then, why are the 51 CIA documents
classified top secret in the Archives and inaccessible to the
public for 75 years? I'm 45, so there's no hope for me, but I'm
already training my eight-year-old son to keep himself physically
fit so that on one glorious September morn in 2038 he can walk
into the National Archives in Washington and find out what the
CIA knew about Lee Harvey Oswald.

If there's a further extension of the top-secret classification,
this may become a generational affair, with questions passed down
from father to son in the manner of the ancient runic bards. But
someday, perhaps, we'll find out what Oswald was doing messing
around with the U-2.

Of course, there are some CIA documents we'll never see. When
the Warren Commission asked to see a secret CIA memo on Oswald's
activities in Russia that had been attached to a State Department
letter on Oswald's Russian stay, word came back that the Agency
was terribly sorry, but the secret memo had been destroyed while
being photocopied. This unfortunate accident took place on November
23, 1963, a day on which there must have occurred a great deal
of spontaneous combustion around Washington.

PLAYBOY: John A. McCone, former director of the Central
Intelligence Agency, has said of Oswald: "The Agency never
contacted him, interviewed him, talked with him or received or
solicited any reports or information from him or communicated
with him in any manner. Lee Harvey Oswald was never associated
or connected directly or indirectly, in any way whatsoever, with
the Agency." Why do you refuse to accept McCone's word?

GARRISON: The head of the CIA, it seems to me, would
think long and hard before he admitted that former employees of
his had been involved in the murder of the President of the United
States --- even if they weren't acting on behalf of the Agency
when they did it. In any case, the CIA's past record hardly induces
faith in the Agency's veracity. CIA officials lied about their
role in the overthrow of the Arbenz Guzman regime in Guatemala;
they lied about their role in the overthrow of Mossadegh in Iran;
they lied about their role in the abortive military revolt against
Sukarno in 1958; they lied about the U-2 incident; and they certainly
lied about the Bay of Pigs. If the CIA is ready to lie even about
its successes --- as in Guatemala and Iran --- do you seriously
believe its director would tell the truth in a case as explosive
as this? Of course, CIA officials grow so used to lying, so steeped
in deceit, that after a while I think they really become incapable
of distinguishing truth and falsehood. Or, in an Orwellian sense,
perhaps they come to believe that truth is what contributes to
national security, and falsehood is anything detrimental to national
security. John McCone would swear he's a Croatian dwarf if he
thought it would advance the interests of the CIA --- which he
automatically equates with the national interest.

PLAYBOY: Let's get down to the facts of the assassination,
as you see them. When --- and why --- did you begin to doubt the
conclusions of the Warren Report?

GARRISON: Until as recently as November of 1966, I had
complete faith in the Warren Report. As a matter of fact, I viewed
its most vocal critics with the same skepticism that much of the
press now views me --- which is why I can't condemn the mass media
too harshly for their cynical approach, except in the handful
of cases where newsmen seem to be in active collusion with Washington
to torpedo our investigation. Of course, my faith in the Report
was grounded in ignorance, since I had never read it; as Mark
Lane says, "The only way you can believe the Report is not
to have read it."

But then, in November, I visited New York City with Senator
Russell Long; and when the subject of the assassination came up,
he expressed grave doubts about the Warren Commission's conclusion
that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin. Now, this disturbed
me, because here was the Majority Whip of the U.S. Senate speaking,
not some publicity hound with an ideological ax to grind; and
if at this late juncture he still entertained serious reservations
about the Commission's determinations, maybe there was more to
the assassination than met the eye. So I began reading every book
and magazine article on the assassination I could get my hands
on --- my tombstone may be inscribed "Curiosity Killed The
D.A." --- and I found my own doubts growing. Finally, I put
aside all other business and started to wade through the Warren
Commission's own 26 volumes of supportive evidence and testimony.
That was the clincher. It's impossible for anyone possessed of
reasonable objectivity and a fair degree of intelligence to read
those 26 volumes and not reach the conclusion that the Warren
Commission was wrong in every one of its major conclusions pertaining
to the assassination. For me, that was the end of innocence.

PLAYBOY: Do you mean to imply that the Warren Commission
deliberately concealed or falsified the facts of the assassination?

GARRISON: No, you don't need any explanation more sinister
than incompetence to account for the Warren Report. Though I didn't
know it at the time, the Commission simply didn't have all the
facts, and many of those they had were fraudulent, as I've pointed
out --- thanks to the evidence withheld and manufactured by the
CIA. If you add to this the fact that most of the Commission members
had already presumed Oswald's guilt and were merely looking for
facts to confirm it --- and in the process tranquilize the American
public --- you'll realize why the Commission was such a dismal
failure. But in the final analysis, it doesn't make a damn bit
of difference whether the Commission members were sincere patriots
or mountebanks; the question is whether Lee Oswald killed the
President alone and unaided; if the evidence doesn't support that
conclusion --- and it doesn't --- a thousand honorable men sitting
shoulder to shoulder along the banks of the Potomac won't change
the facts.

PLAYBOY: So you began your investigation of the President's
assassination on nothing stronger than you own doubts and the
theories of the Commission's critics?

GARRISON: No, please don't put words in my mouth. The
works of the critics --- particularly Edward Epstein, Harold Weisberg
and Mark Lane --- sparked my general doubts about the assassination;
but more importantly, they led me into specific areas of inquiry.
After I realized that something was seriously wrong, I had no
alternative but to face the fact that Oswald had arrived in Dallas
only a short time before the assassination and that prior to that
time he had lived in New Orleans for over six months. I became
curious about what this alleged assassin was doing while under
my jurisdiction, and my staff began an investigation of Oswald's
activities and contacts in the New Orleans area. We interviewed
people the Warren Commission had never questioned, and a whole
new world began opening up. As I studied Oswald's movements in
Dallas, my mind turned back to the aftermath of the assassination
in 1963, when my office questioned three men --- David Ferrie,
Alvin Beauboeuf and Melvin Coffey --- on suspicion of being involved
in the assassination. I began to wonder if we hadn't dismissed
these three men too lightly, and we reopened our investigation
into their activities.

PLAYBOY: Why did you become interested in Ferrie and
his associates in November 1963?

GARRISON: To explain that, I'll have to tell you something
about the operation of our office. I believe we have one of the
best district attorney's offices in the country. We have no political
appointments and, as a result, there's a tremendous amount of
esprit among our staff and an enthusiasm for looking into unanswered
questions. That's why we got together the day after the assassination
and began examining our files and checking out every political
extremist, religious fanatic and kook who had ever come to our
attention. And one of the names that sprang into prominence was
that of David Ferrie. When we checked him out, as we were doing
with innumerable other suspicious characters, we discovered that
on November 22nd he had traveled to Texas to go "duck hunting"
and "ice skating."

Well, naturally, this sparked our interest. We staked out his
house and we questioned his friends, and when he came back ---
the first thing he did on his return, incidentally, was to contact
a lawyer and then hide out for the night at a friend's room in
another town --- we pulled him and his two companions in for questioning.
The story of Ferrie's activities that emerged was rather curious.
He drove nine hours through a furious thunderstorm to Texas, then
apparently gave up his plans to go duck hunting and instead went
to an ice-skating rink in Houston and stood waiting beside a pay
telephone for two hours; he never put the skates on. We felt his
movements were suspicious enough to justify his arrest and that
of his friends, and we took them into custody. When we alerted
the FBI, they expressed interest and asked us to turn the three
men over to them for questioning. We did, but Ferrie was released
soon afterward and most of its report on him was classified top
secret and secreted in the National Archives, where it will remain
inaccessible to the public until September 2038 A.D. No one, including
me, can see those pages.

PLAYBOY: Why do you believe the FBI report on Ferrie
is classified?

GARRISON: For the same reason the President's autopsy
X rays and photos and other vital evidence in this case are classified
--- because they would indicate the existence of a conspiracy,
involving former employees of the CIA, to kill the President.

PLAYBOY: When you resumed your investigation of Ferrie
three years later, did you discover any new evidence?

GARRISON: We discovered a whole mare's-nest of underground
activity involving the CIA, elements of the paramilitary right
and militant anti-Castro exile groups. We discovered links between
David Ferrie, Lee Oswald and Jack Ruby. We discovered, in short,
what I had hoped not to find, despite my doubts about the Warren
Commission --- the existence of a well-organized conspiracy to
assassinate John Kennedy, a conspiracy that came to fruition in
Dallas on November 22, 1963, and in which David Ferrie played
a vital role.